


The Little Bird That Kept So Many Warm

by deskclutter



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: Community: 31_days, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-04 23:43:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The villain is vanquished, the story is done. Fakir weaves a nettle shirt and Ahiru is at loose ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Little Bird That Kept So Many Warm

**Author's Note:**

> **Day/Theme:** March 1st (2010) / Hunt for the liquid measure of your steps

It began, as many such things in Kinkan Town begin, with a story in a book.

 

But before that there was a small duck, who rooted through the pondweed, caught in a state of something not unlike contentment.

I have called it pondweed, but the weeds did not lie on the surface of a pond but a lake that could lie so still that its blue-and-silvered surface resembled a reflecting mirror. It reflected in itself a winking yellow sun that bobbed between strands of white cotton cloud.

All at once, the small duck moved, and the mirror moved with her, breaking under ripples, and it was never quite the same again until long after the duck had hoisted herself onto the shore to waddle along a stony path that led to a stone doorstep. On that door step was a door, and in that door was set a smaller door. It was through this small door that the small duck vanished, and it was through the larger door that the writer entered, when he returned home.

 

The writer once overheard a conversation on the school grounds, which he never related to the duck.

"What does he do all day in the library?"

"I heard that he's working on a self-study project. He's a top student, so the school administrators are kind to him."

"Isn't he a ballet student, though? No one seems to see him practise any more, these days."

"Maybe he practises at home, you know..."

He had ignored them and strode on. In the library there are many books, and in books are the sum of all knowledge. He seeks a certain piece of this wisdom, and he has not yet found it in all the books that he has read. There are so many more to read.

 

He had not begun to be a writer, as you ought to know by now. There had been a prince, you see, with pale hair and a pale face; his fortunes had fallen low. The knight had been needed, so the knight took up the sword. It had all been destined long ago. It had all been written in a book.

It is no easy thing, to break a book. He will tell you, if you ask, and he will say that even so, it is a task best taken on by two than one, and better yet if three should take the yoke than two. It is not enough to break a book with words alone, for that is the stuff from which books are crafted, along with dream and nightmare. It was difficult for him to discover even this, and it is only his fortune in companions -- for they were stubborn enough to force their aid on him -- that gave him the means to make this discovery. It is to his fortune that he, at school, had learnt even the modicum of grace by which he could accept this.

 

There came a day when the duck returned to find him nursing red welts upon his hands and feet. A badly woven little shirt dangled from his fingers. She cried out, in dismay at first, at the sight of those red welts, then in squawks of surprise and outrage when he threw the shirt over her yellow head.

"Oh," he said, with a rusty voice, a voice that had not spoken a word, or a grunt, or a sound for a night and a day. "It didn't work. I suppose it's logical, for there isn't a spell on you to be broken -- the spell has been broken, hasn't it? Still, I had hoped--" His voice stumbled, as though disuse had made it clumsy, and he bit his lip to keep his clumsy tongue from dropping more broken little phrases without his bidding.

She quacked angrily at him, as she ran in a flustered circle until she chose a direction, and that direction lay towards the small door within a door. She disappeared through it in a trice.

This startled him, so he hobbled to the door to call her name -- "Ahiru!" --but she had fled, he could see as much. Suddenly, though his attention had slipped away from it before, the pain became all too much to bear. He slipped down along the side of the doorpost and settled on the doorstep, which slowly warmed beneath his seat.

 

When he woke from a light doze, he found beside him, strangely, a lamp. The lamp was not strange to him; he knew it. He knew that it usually stood upon his desk, beside a pot of India ink, a sharpening knife, and a freshly sharpened quill; what he found strange was how the lamp had come to stand beside him instead.

It was the duck who had brought him the lamp, and it was when the duck walked into the room that the lamp flared brightest, he remembered. Such things are apt to happen in Kinkan Town. He ought, by now, to have expected it.

"Are you waiting for her too?" he asked the lamp. It made no answer, but the lamp's glow was warm, and the writer took comfort from that.

 

At length, there was a rustle in the grass before the small duck emerged, bearing with her a length of gauze and a pot of salve. The nettle shirt had disappeared, lost somewhere along her mad dash away and back again.

"Where did you get those?" demanded the writer.

The duck glared at him defiantly and said, "QUA."

He had no rebuttal for that, and so he mutely accepted her ministrations. She did her best, but he held a belief, one he wisely did not voice, that even with opposable fingers and thumbs rather than bill and feathers, her method of wrapping bandages would be equally sloppy.

"It began with a story in a book," he said instead, to take their minds off it.

 

It was in the library, among old shelves and with the weight of silence ringing in his ears, that the writer first read of the tale of the nettle shirts. Accordingly, he had gathered stinging nettles with his hands, and he had crushed the nettles with his feet, and he had he had spun it into flax which he had woven into a useless shirt.

"I had already given so many words," he said. "But you'll remember when we fought the raven, there were words and there was pain. I thought there might be an imbalance somewhere, and perhaps this was the way to fix that. Evidently, I was wrong."

"Quack qua! Quack!" she scolded, but she laid her head upon his knee, so he supposed he was forgiven.

"Moron," said the writer. "I can't give up." She stuck her tongue out at him, but her eyes were full of tears. He looked down at his hands and began to rewrap them. "I've bandaged my hands for you before; I'll do it again, if I must," he muttered.

 

In the morning, he no longer limped, and the duck saw him off before she fetched the things she had borrowed and wrapped them in a bright red cloth. She carried the bundle with her beak and set off too. It was lucky she was so strong for a duck!

The things belonged to Autor. He hadn't known that she had borrowed his pot of salve or his gauzy bandages, but Autor was a meticulous person who probably did not injure himself very often -- unlike certain persons who should not, absolutely should not, have gone to the trouble and the pain -- so he might not have even noticed that they had mysteriously disappeared.

Autor's door did not have a small door in it, but his window had been open yesterday. Today, to her dismay, it was shut tight, and she could see no other way in. This distressed her, until she remembered that Autor had a locker at school. Ah, he would definitely notice if she replaced the salve there, but maybe he would think his mind was playing tricks on him?

 

The atmosphere of Kinkan Academy's music section was not very much like the ballet department. Conspicuously, there were far fewer mirrors. Music stands lurked in shadowy corners, music cases were neatly stacked against the wall, but a few stray instruments lay abandoned in the corridors -- an enormous double-bass, a horn of some sort that shone brassily when the sunlight swept over it, a silver triangle that hung from the latch of a window.

Music leaked out of a practice room. It was a gentle, easy melody that neither galloped fast nor stole along too slowly. Putting down her bundle, the duck lingered to listen to the tune, and wondered if Autor played it. A feeling stirred inside her, an indescribable warmth and aching that had burrowed deep into her heart. It was a feeling old and dear to the duck, but one she that could ignore with the ease of practice.

Still, the halls were deserted, and oh! she longed to dance...

 

This is said of Kinkan Academy's library: when one seeks the writer, who haunts the hallowed silence found in libraries like a ghost, one need only wander along the shelves on shelves of fairytales, where a trail of gaping holes like moonstruck pebbles or delicious breadcrumbs will lead the seeker straight to him. Few think to look for him, however, and those who pluck up their courage to do so flee at their first glimpse of him, for his figure is intimidating.

So many things began in books, in Kinkan Town, that the struggle to find that which he sought had drawn a strict, harsh line across the face of the writer when he worked. Many tales end so perfectly that he had not to date found a trace of the struggle that arrives thereafter. Once a villain is vanquished, there too does a story end. They lived happily ever after. That is a lovely sentiment, but it provided no help with his predicament.

There was no question in his mind that the answer was not unwritten, only uncovered. All things are written in books. "Perhaps I am looking in the wrong section in the wrong library in the wrong town," he sighed. He paused to close his eyes.

The trouble is that once a book is ended, whether by fair and natural cause or forcible breaking, who then is left to be fought? The antagonist is gone, and there goes much of the conflict, thereby allowing the natural conclusion of a happy ending. Yet even in the wake of the raven's death, there was so much conflict swirling, in the heart of this writer and--

"--a duck dancing in the music building!?"

"Yes, yes~! Sensei won't believe a word of it, he insists it's a prank that the music students are playing on us all. All the music students are up in arms; they've sworn to find this duck so Sensei will have to eat his words, but 'The ballet section is not to be so easily taken in!' he declared -- Sensei, that's to sa--"

"A dancing what?" he interrupted. The girls jumped guiltily.

"A-ah, Fakir!" He remembered them, they were friends of-- "We didn't know you were at school today. Are you coming to cla--"

"A duck! Dancing along to piano music! Can you believe it?"

"Ducks don't -- well. It's highly unlikely that ducks would dance, even if they could," he said diplomatically.

The first girl nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah! They're just not built right for dancing! We don't dance to 'Duck Lake' or 'Dance of the Little Ducks', right? Face it, it could never happen."

"Ehh, but if it were true!" cried the other girl. "Sensei would be beside himself, and wouldn't that be adorable to watch?"

He slipped out as the argument brewed, hearing only the sharp cry of a sorely put-upon man as he left:

"Would you kindly shut up? This is a library!" And all sound ceased thereafter.

 

When the door opened, allowing the streaming sun to blind her in her hiding place, the duck had to fight not to quack at her sudden blinding. But when her vision cleared, she saw that it was only him, and she collapsed in relief.

"This is familiar," he noted drily. "What should I say now? 'Come with me, I'll feed you bread?'"

"QUA," she whisper-shouted, disgruntled and sheepish all at once. He took no notice of that as he bundled her out of his locker.

"I heard about the dancing," he said quietly as they walked along. "Idiot. What were you thinking?"

She poked her head out long enough to stick her tongue out at him, then she huddled into his side, grateful for the cover.

He muffled his laughter, but she heard it as it rumbled all along his side. He really was a good person; when he set her down outside the gates, he tore off a piece of bread and scattered the crumbs for her as promised, though he hadn't really needed to. "What will I do with you?" he wondered, folding his bandaged hands as he sat, leaning against the warm stone wall.

She pecked contentedly, keeping her head down. She was a little embarrassed, to be honest.

"Hey, you," he said abruptly.

She jumped and lifted her head.

"If you want to dance," he said, "then you should dance."

"Qua?"

"I want you to live happily ever after," he elaborated. "Therefore, you should dance, if that's your desire."

 

At first, she danced where she thought no one would see her. She was content to be a duck, but a duck was not very graceful; certainly not as graceful as a swan. Ducks do not wear gold crowns or transform into beautiful maidens beneath the light of the moon. Ducks are not enchanted royalty that return to human form with the donning of a nettle shirt.

So she danced by herself. She tried to dance before a mirror once, but she fell into the water and broke it, and she decided not to try again.

She danced where only the voiceless rushes and the wind that spoke in a song she did not understand could see her. Nothing strange or magic happened -- only the easing of that little ache that went away when she danced.

As she grew bolder, she danced along the stone path that led to the small cottage, and she danced through the small door within a door, and when the writer came home, he found her dancing there.

 

Then one day, she turned to him and turned her wingtips in a circle above her head.

He had not expected that.

 

One by one, that night as he sat before his desk, and the warm golden lamp glowed beside his inkpot, the words unlocked themselves. They were good words, but they were not words that would have come to him in the aftermath of the story, though they might have come had he danced more.

The lamp flared brighter all of a sudden, and he turned before he could think better of it.

 

"I never expected you to ask me to dance," he confessed later, after they had both stopped shouting, his blush had cleared off, and she was -- thankfully -- clothed again.

"Well, you should have!" she insisted. "Because you know, Fakir, if you want to dance, then you should dance too!"

"I know that now," he argued. "I just never figured out that when the villain is gone, then the only person left to fight is one's own self. So I never realised that I was fighting myself, even though I knew you were."

They both digested this thought for a little bit. "Ehh," she said eventually. "I know I'm not as smart as you, Fakir, but I think that maybe, that is to say, with the help of logic, maybe we should stop fighting ourselves?"

"Hn," he said. "I'll help you, if you promise to stay and help me."

"Yes, okay," she said. "Because you really, really need help with that."

He took her hand, and smiled.

 

"And that is how the tale of Fakir and Ahiru began.

"The End."

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic comes from [this poem](http://www.bartleby.com/113/1032.html).


End file.
